Two civilians were killed when a rocket fired by militants hit their home in eastern Afghanistan, police said Monday, as the US-led coalition said it killed five Taliban elsewhere in the country.
The civilians, an elderly woman and a child, died Sunday when a rocket fired by Taliban-linked extremists at a nearby NATO base in eastern Khost province hit their home, provincial police chief Abdul Qayoum Baqizoi said.
Two other children were injured in the attack, he said. A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the children were being treated in a military hospital.
Separately the US-led coalition, which operates alongside ISAF, said it killed five Taliban in a raid on a "known Taliban militant" said to have been in contact with Al-Qaeda fighters in central Ghazni province.
"Coalition forces Sunday disrupted the foreign fighter network, killing five armed Taliban militants in Ghazni," the coalition said in a statement. It did not give further details.
The hardline Taliban movement was in power between 1996 and 2001. It was ousted from government by a US-led invasion after the regime refused to hand over Al-Qaeda kingpins blamed for the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Remnants of the militia have been waging an increasingly bloody insurgency which has claimed the lives of thousands of people.
